Thinking about pickups on Christmas Eve...

Well, it's Christmas eve and the electric plans are finally starting to come into fruition. I've decided on a piezo pseudo-strat, which I think is going to be pretty sweet. I went ahead and ordered my LR Baggs X-bridge, along with an active pre-amp for the piezo pickup in the bridge. The pre-amp saves a lot of wiring hassle by having built in blend pot and stereo/mono output jack switching which allows mono output with the piezo and magnetic pickups blended or stereo output with the piezo and the magnetic pickups in their own channel to allow a y cable to output to two separate amps, one acoustic amp and a regular electric amp. The preamp also has a built in gain pot to level the output with the mag pickups and a phase switch to allow the piezo to be in phase with the magnetic pickups.

Here's the bridge (will be gold, not chrome as pictured) and pre-amp:
I did quite a bit of research on pickups, mainly reading discussions at fenderforum.com and reviews in various places and decided that I wanted to do some single coils instead of humbuckers, which is what I've always had on any electric guitars up to this point. I stumbled upon Lace Sensor noiseless single coil pickups and decided to give them a shot. I ordered up a set of Hot Golds with black covers and the higher output 13.2k bridge pickup, and I'm pretty excited to hear how they sound with the Hot Rod Deluxe. Here's some info on them from the lace website:

It's not just a dual coil trying to emulate a single coil.

This is a true Single coil and it's our quiet noise reduced Sensor design! We added to a classic design. This revised and enhanced new lace sensor Hot Gold has slightly stronger output. They retain all the definition of the regular Gold Lace Sensors but add a firm bottom and singing mid range. Excellent from clean to vintage growl. Our new most popular pickup.

These Lace Sensor Hot Gold's have a fat, full bottom end, a singing midrange and all the high end sparkle and class you would expect from a killer Strat everything is there like never before.

Three-notes into these pickups and you too will hear the greatness we have all been waiting for.

"The Tech Talk"
Upgraded hotter Barium Ferrite magnets, Patented Lace Micro Matrix Combs for killer Vintage tone, available with an optional Hot Bridge 13.2k for more power and cut for harder rockin' and searing solos. Or the Standard Set all 6.0k's for neck, middle and bridge for that traditional Stratocaster vibe.

Neck 6.0k "Hot magnets"
Middle 6.0k "Hot magnets"
Bridge 6.0k "Hot magnets"



Hot Gold

• Position: neck, mid
• Resistance: 6.0k
• Peak frequency: 3600
• Inductance: 2.2

Hot Bridge

• Position: bridge
• Resistance: 13.2k
• Peak frequency: 2510
• Inductance: 6.1

So add an Alder chambered body with a maple drop top, maple neck, cocobolo fingerboard (maybe...), some schaller gold tuners, with all other gold hardware and this guitar is going to be pretty sweet...